Sixteen Confessions
by VivaLaVida1704
Summary: I suppose it started when I first saw you.But it didn't really start until they sent me back to Wrickenridge to get clean, to fix myself again.Except you were the only one who could ever fix me - you, the one who broke me in the first place. My soulfinder, my perfect broken soulfinder. I love you even if the world hates me for it. Even if you hate me for it. Will/OC
1. How am I going to be an optimist?

**Well howdy folks, long time no see! I know it's been a while since I posted anything on here and I know I'm really bad about things like this but the reason is I've been writing this original thing that I really like but I've grown to hate the stories that I already had uploaded on here so I'm trying something different, something a little bit new. I really hope you like it, it's a Will soulfinder story, but one that's a wee bit different. Let me know what you think?**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing whatsoever, all rights to Joss Stirling.**

**Chapter One **

**How am I going to be an optimist about this?**

_(We were born with nothing and we sure as hell have nothing now)_

The thing is, not once did I think it was a good idea. Not once did I manage to trick myself, deceive myself, hypnotise myself that it was the right thing to do. I knew it wasn't, I always knew.

I just never cared.

And looking back on it now, that's what I hate about it. I hate that I didn't care, hate that I thought it didn't matter. It mattered, _you _mattered. I don't hate that it happened. I hate that I thought I would forget about it, that I didn't think that this one moment had the power to tip the scales, to rip the world to shreds, to turn it on its end.

It did.

I was eighteen and for the first time in those eighteen years I was off my head drunk. I was also not talking to a single person in my family because new phenomena tend to come all at once so, like lost souls always do I drifted towards the spot in town where the alcohol was flowing freest and I drank.

It was around the moment when the world started to slip out of focus and everything stopped hurting, when I started to see through kaleidoscope eyes all the things I wanted to see, the things I wish I could've been, could've done, could've changed, that I realised I kind of liked this drunk business.

Then I saw you, and I realised I loved it.

You were still dating Warren at the time, and Warren was still my best friend at that point. Well, nominally at least which is still more than what he became afterwards. He liked to call himself my best friend, liked being friends with the quarterback, the king of the Wrickenridge Warriors, soon to be a college football star, even if inexplicably his parents couldn't stand the idea. The problem was by the time we were eighteen he liked smoking pot and shooting up and staring at girls who weren't you more.

Anyway, you were still dating Warren and that just makes what I did worse, a million times worse. Note, I say – what _I _did, not what _we _did. I don't blame you – didn't then, don't now, never will.

You looked gorgeous that night. Actually, you always looked gorgeous but I didn't realise then that of all the things you are, gorgeous is the least remarkable. So just the way you looked in the shaky fluorescent light – that light that's no real colour and yet still makes everyone look sickly and yellow and congealed, everyone except you – and the fact that you were the only person in that room who looked like they were even half alive, that was enough to make me stare.

But like I say, you've always been gorgeous. Big, dark blue eyes and curly brown hair that always looked too dark to be natural, too extraordinary to be real. But until that night you'd been Warren's girlfriend, strictly off-limits, not to be stared at, not ever. And besides, there was always something in your eyes when you looked at me, something that suggested very loudly and very obviously with that harsh Boston accent of yours that always sounded so much tougher and stronger and braver than our soft drawls, that you knew how to kill me and rip my dead body into tiny little pieces without breaking a nail. Don't get me wrong, I think that was the look you gave everyone, but it always made me nervous, made me cautious. Warren's girlfriend or not, you weren't to be touched, you were something sacred, something special, something so precious that if you didn't keep everyone away, the world would collapse around our ears.

It was a rule I made myself and a rule I'd stuck to for as long as I knew you. But that ight, exactly ten and a half days before we graduated high school and moved along with our lives I wanted to break a rule. Not to rebel, not to hurt anyone or make myself look better. Because there was something inside me, even then I guess, something that screamed 'you're not good enough, you'll never be good enough' in my ears at two in the morning, or when my entire illustrious family with their high-powered jobs or flashy college degrees or just general reputation for being a 'hero', a 'saviour' met for Sunday lunch. I was the nice brother, the sweet, calm, gentle giant of the seven. Not good for much except tossing around a ball, not talented in the way my other brothers were talented. Just Will.

And that night, just being Will made me want to scream, made me want to stop being calm and sweet and gentle. It made me want to punch someone, to break the laws my father had laid down in front of me because those laws were taking from me the only thing I was good at, the only thing I had that made me different, made me special. I wanted to break a rule and I saw you and I realised exactly how to do it.

So if you were wondering, that's why I sat down next to you, why I offered you a mug of warm beer I'd snatched from someone else's hands even though you had your own paper cup full of the stuff, why I laughed when you raised your eyebrows at me and said 'making up for lost time Benedict?" but took it anyway. Except somehow, part of me makes me think you already knew that. Because that's what you do, you know things. Things you're proud to know, things you shouldn't know and things I know you wish desperately you didn't. Sometimes I wonder which category I fall into.

I sat down, and I offered you beer and you laughed at me and somehow we were talking. In a way we'd never really talked before, in a way I wasn't sure we ever could.

"What brings you down to the gates of hell angel-boy?" you asked with that smile of yours, that smile that makes every guy in the room want to run for their mummy's and move a little closer to you at the same time.

"I'm no angel," I'd shot back and you just laughed even harder.

"Yeah? Prove it then."

And all of a sudden I realised that this must be the closest to you I'd ever been, the most our skin had ever touched and I realised something else too.

I wanted to get closer.

Because this was the first time I realised that you always smell a little like eucalyptus because all those cigarettes you never thought about made your throat crap and got you hooked on those lozenges you can buy in safeways for a dollar – and I get to say that Casey, because you said it first. It was also the first time I figured out that the reason you sound like you're choking when you laugh is because you forget to breathe when you're excited. It was the first time I'd counted how many tattoos you had – more than I'd known but less than I'd expected, you just hide them better than most people do – and finally understood why people thought tattoos were sexy.

It took me four years of high school to realize it Case, but you were the singularly most interesting person I'd ever met. And you got straight under my skin like a needle, but the thought of you was a better high than any drug I've ever had burning through my blood stream and you know as well as I do that I must have tried them all.

You told me to prove that I was no angel.

I wanted to prove it to myself.

More than that I wanted you.

So I leaned in and put my mouth on yours and for a second that spiralled away from us for an eternity I realised what I'd done, realised what I'd just broken and realised I didn't know my way back from the precipice I'd just thrown myself down. And then you were kissing me back and I stopped caring. I forgot about those rules I'd just broken and forgot the fact that I'd let my family down because I wasn't strong enough or brave enough to accept the rules everyone else just swallowed like a pill, I forgot that what I was doing was wrong, forgot that we had ten and a half days left together and then you were going to disappear like smoke and I would just be a name in your yearbook.

Kissing you is the only life I remembered.

Everyone saw us Casey. Everyone in that room and by the next day it was running through the arteries of the school like blood. And yet I only remember half of it. I remember Warren sucker-punching me on graduation day in front of my entire family, I remember that it wasn't until he really started kicking me that my brothers decided enough was enough and dragged him off. I remember that a lot of it got blamed on you – because I was the 'good boy' and you were the 'bad girl' and because I was a Benedict and you were fucked up from the moment you opened those big blue eyes of yours. I think those are your words again Case, sounds like something you'd say and it also sounds like something I'd disagreed with, which I did and which I do but of course you know that too.

I also remember that there was more, that I fought with my parents for only the second time in my life and I fought with my brothers and I ended up sleeping on your couch for a couple of nights. I remember that the last time I saw you for what felt like forever was when you walked across that stage to accept your diploma and I remember that dead, sinking feeling in my stomach because I already knew there would never be a 'next time.' But mostly it's a blur, a rush, a concoction of noise and words and thoughts and feelings and pain and anger and fear and love.

Because really, what I remember is that kiss. Your lips on mine, your hands on my shoulders and your breath against my skin.

_(so tell me now where was my fault?)_

Oddly enough, four years later, staring at the burn-out lightbulb swinging from the bathroom ceiling, the LSD fizzing and popping and exploding through my body that kiss is still what I remembered. I think I should have thought of my mother in that sudden still, cold, heavy moment that I realised I couldn't move, should've thought of home as the paramedics fitted an oxygen mask over my face. I should've regretted more, should've wished for another chance, should've screamed 'dear god let me live, let me fix this.'

But I didn't.

In those seconds before I slipped under, before my mistakes reached up and dragged me down, I thought of you, thought of the kiss.

And that, Casey Juliette Elena Kendrick, is the first reason, the first of sixteen. The reasons you built me up and tore me down, the reasons you fixed me and shattered me, loved me and hated me. The sixteen reasons why you are the best and worst thing in my life. The reasons I need you to do something for me, though I don't think I'll say just what yet.

For that you need to keep reading.

Will.


	2. Lost!

**Right so here's chapter two…hopefully you'll like it? Let me know in a review if it's ok…reviews are like pretzels you know.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own either Joss Stirling or any of the pop culture references in here. Casey on the other hand, belongs to me. She's dark and twisty people trust me you probably don't want to steal her. **

**Chapter Two**

**Lost!**

_(If it all goes crashing into the sea, if it's just you and me trying to find a light)_

If I'm honest I don't know why I'm doing this, why I'm writing this all down. By now you should've got the first letter I sent, the first reason, the first of the sixteen. But God knows if you read it or threw it out, if you opened it or saw my handwriting and fed it to your cigarette lighter until the words crumbled and the story inside blew away like ash.

And if God does know he isn't sharing.

But putting it into words – this panicky, swirling, twisting mess in my head – it makes me feel sane again, makes me feel like I'm talking to you, like you're here next to me. I miss how we just…talked. You can't talk to most people, can't just say the words that flutter from your brain to your tongue, can't just let your thoughts slip out. You have to be careful, have to play safe, always shaping the words before you say them, always scared to say what you really think.

Telling the truth is like turning yourself inside out, like your heart is on the outside where everyone can see it and point and laugh and scream at how black it really is, how twisted and bitter and held together by safety pins. How broken. Maybe that's why nobody ever does it. Nobody but you. Because I realise now that I get to look back on it all, that not one word that trickled off your tongue has ever been a lie.

So now it's my turn.

Now it's my life on the line, my thoughts out in the open and my feelings waiting for the world to throw stones at it.

Now it's my heart in your hands.

And you can break it if you have to.

_(Just because I'm losing, doesn't mean I'm lost)_

There was a crack on the wall that looked like Nebraska. I knew because the first game I ever started was against the Huskers and some idiot brought the frickin' state flag with them. I stared and stared at it till my eyes couldn't focus anymore, till the world started lurching and slipping and reeling away from me.

I didn't want to look at my Dad you see. Didn't want to meet her eye. For some reason it wasn't my mom that bothered me, the pain on her face, the betrayal, the disappointment that would've once had me throwing myself on the floor to plead for her forgiveness couldn't even puncture the walls around what little emotion I had left – the guilt and the pain and the remorse that hadn't been numbed by heroin yet, the parts of my conscience that weren't on a permanent high. Her tears couldn't touch me, her sighs, her constant assurances that it would be ok, it would all be ok.

It wouldn't be ok. I was almost ninety-five per cent positive of that.

But Dad…he just sat there. Just sat and stared. Of course he smiled when he had to, nodded at all the right moments but his face was blank, empty. Like I'd been wiped from his memory, like he didn't recognize the man sat in front of him. Maybe he didn't, I don't know.

I've always hated hospitals and as they go Denver Hospital has to be one of the worst, cold and metallic, somehow angled so you can't see from any of the various windows any of the things that made the city bearable – the Rockies, Mile High stadium, the faint glimmer of green that was the park – and only the things that made it loathsome; the twisted metal skyscrapers that chased the sky, the constant blue glaring lights of cop cars that always flashed somewhere in the city. From here the city looked how I felt; twisted and faded, used up and empty, totally and completely isolated, up so high nobody could ever bring me down. Most of the time I felt like I was floating away into space and I was the only one who gave a damn about that.

I felt like the hospital was burying me, like every day I spent there I was becoming less and less like myself, like Will Benedict and more and more some other person; a man without a face, a disease that conveniently had a body. Because that's what my doctor was calling it as he explained it all to my parents 'a disease'. That's what they call addictions. Like we were all just fine before we had one, like there was nothing wrong with us – we were clean and pristine and perfect. Like people don't get addicted to heroin because they've got nothing better to be addicted to, nothing else to keep them going in those impenetrable hours before dawn when the world holds it's breath because it seems impossible we'll ever see the sun again. Like I couldn't help what happened, like someone else did it to me, someone else's hand put the needle in and flushed my blood full of drugs, or snorted so much cocaine 'snow-nose' was being polite.

"The fact of the matter is," I remember realizing with a start that it wasn't my doctor speaking but my coach. Or one of my coaches anyway, the one who wasn't busy desperately searching for my replacement. "William is an incredibly valuable player, _incredibly valuable._ I mean you must have seen for yourself, if he'd had another minute more we'd have won the superbowl final –"

"Actually we didn't see the superbowl this year," my dad said quietly. "We were working on a case, the whole family. I don't even think I knew Will was starting this season, otherwise I would've been sure to come watch,"

He glanced at me, reproachfully maybe? Or resentfully? I don't even know, I never knew, I was just staring at the wall, always staring. _Think of Nebraska, of Nebraska. Think of how you beat them, your first game as a pro and you beat them almost single-handedly. Think of how good that felt._

I'd been going to ring home, going to tell them I was playing, that it would be on TV. I don't know whether you know, don't even know if you came to one of games but for my entire high school career there wasn't a case or a job or a murder that could keep my family from coming to watch me play football. But then I remembered the messages I left on the home phone, the sinking moment when I'd realised nobody in Wrickenridge wanted to be the one to call back. That had only made the win feel better, feel bigger. No matter what they thought, I'd told myself. I was a champion, I mattered to people. Even if the people I actually wanted to matter to couldn't care less.

"I don't quite understand what role we play in this," my mother said, meekly, quietly. I couldn't remember the last time I'd ever heard her sound anything other than loud, happy, vibrant. "I mean obviously we want to help our son's recovery as much as we can and I understand that it's important to you that he's ready for next season but this is hardly our area of expertise."

She kept on looking at me, I could see her from the corner of my eye. She wanted me to look back, wanted me to notice her, wanted to see if there was any trace of her son left in my face. I couldn't do it. It might be my father's stillness that was twisting the knife in my back but that didn't mean I could bear to see the pain in her eyes, bear to see my sins written across her face because I knew there was nothing I could do but hurt her now. I never wanted to hurt her, I never wanted to hurt anybody. I didn't even want to hurt myself.

Or maybe I did, I don't really know.

"William needs to be carefully monitored," it was my doctor speaking again. I could never actually remember his name so I always just think of him as 'the Doctor', even if that does conjure up images of British actors and trench coats and terrible weather. "Just for a few months so that he knows he's not going through this alone, so he has support whilst he's recovering," support. Right. Well ok then.

"We were wondering if maybe returning home for a few months might be the ideal solution," Coach Getzler chipped in. "A way for him to have the best recovery possible in an environment he's familiar with, no dealing with strangers, no press hassling him twenty-four seven."

That was the point where I excused myself, walked out of the room like a little child letting the grown-ups decide what was best. That's the thing about life, everybody in the world loves to play God but nobody wants to get played.

The hallway was emptier than a hospital hallway should be. Quiet, but the sort of quiet that only makes you feel more nervous, feel like you're standing on the edge of something and any moment now the hand of God's going to push you down into it.

I don't remember when I started feeling like I was sleepwalking, like my brain had switched off and I was just learning to live without it, like I was moving through life with my eyes closed, just going through the motions, playing someone else's role. Maybe it was when Vick found his soulfinder – he was only two years older than me and he'd already given up – or maybe when Xav announced he was getting happy. Maybe it was when I realised that everybody else in my family was happy – still lucky, still smiling, still flying through life feeling like they were made of gold, untouchable, unbreakable – realised that I was the only one still alone.

I'd stopped searching for the switch a long time ago, stopped wondering how to turn my life back on, how to find my way back home from the desert island I'd managed to wash up on. That didn't mean I didn't miss who I was, miss feeling anything other than numb.

I wandered down the hallway, staring at the lights swinging from the ceiling, looking out over the city, wondering if someone would ever hand over the pieces of myself that were lost somewhere far away, if I'd ever get myself back.

Then I saw you. Actually I heard you first. There are a lot of things I could say about that Case but I won't because you'll hate me for it. Hate me even more than you do now.

"Fuck," someone swore behind me, as suddenly it started raining words. Paper flew up above my head and scattered across the floor around me and all I could do was stare as you fell to your knees to try and snatch them all back up.

_I'm losing my mind, _I told myself, _I'm finally losing my mind._ After all the times I'd seen things that weren't there, all the times I'd thought I was somewhere else or with someone else there you were, the only person I wanted to see in the one place I didn't want to be. And it just wasn't possible, it was like Santa Claus or the Tooth fairy, one of those things we cling onto so desperately even though we know they can't ever be real.

You looked almost the same, time hadn't touched you, hadn't made you look sadder yet though you were or angrier yet though you were that too. You still had streaks of blue in your hair, still had the piercing over your eyebrow and rings in your ears. And you still had that way of looking at me like I'd sinned just in breathing too loudly.

"No really, don't bother helping, it's fine," you'd snarled as you snatched up papers with one hand and shoved them back into a ringbinder with the other. That's when I realised I couldn't be going crazy, realized that you were really there. Something that might just have been hope started to flood the pit of my stomach, something that bubbled up inside me so sweet I was afraid I might choke on it, something I hadn't felt in so long it felt like being thrown into somebody else's body.

I just stared. Stared until you stood up straight looking dangerously like you might slap me. Stared as I took in your scrubs and your lab-coat and the fact you had a hospital ID looped around your neck.

"Casey?" I choked out. "Casey Kendrick? You work here?"

I've never seen somebody's face change so quickly Case, I really haven't. I watched as your glare folded up into shock, as your eyebrows flew up and your jaw swung open. And just the fact that it wasn't pity you were wearing – I'd seen enough of that to make my soul feel heavy, make my heart feel tired – or anger which was almost worse, was enough to make me love you even then. It was just shock, plain and simple, nothing more, nothing less.

"Jesus Christ," you said slowly. "Will Benedict. I mean, I saw what happened, on the TV but I never thought, I mean…" you started stammering as your mind flicked through all the things you wanted to say, the things that were screaming to be said. "What are you doing here?"

"Wandering around aimlessly while other people discuss my future," I said, shrugging. "I mean, they can't send me to rehab because God knows how long that'll take and they won't let me live by myself -,"

"No freaking duh," you muttered to yourself.

"So by the look of it I will be living with my parents because I truly am that cool," I finished rolling my eyes at you.

I don't know what it was, something about you made me feel normal, made me feel real. I wasn't the guy who would smoke anything he could get his hands on, I wasn't the football star who climbed too fast and fell too far, I was just the guy I'd been in high school, the guy who was never quite enough but happy anyway.

When did I stop being happy with the way I am? When did the insecurities build up so high that the things I liked became the things I hated and the things I hated became the things that made me need to run, need to escape, to forget?

For just a second the question didn't matter, none of the questions –_why can't I stop? Why am I doing this? What have I done?_ – that chased my heart around my rib cage and spun my brain out of control mattered anymore. Because the way you looked at me was the way you always had, the way you looked at everybody else. And I might not have meant the same to you that you meant to me but I never had, I hadn't fallen from grace as far as you were concerned, I hadn't fallen anywhere. I hadn't been cast out, hadn't gotten lost. I was just a person. And for the first time in my entire history of doing everything I did to matter more, to mean more, to be more than I was, not mattering felt ok, felt good, felt safe. Because it meant that I hadn't screwed up yet, meant that I still had a chance.

I could start over if I could find the strength to start at all.

"You want my advice?" You said with a look that made it obvious you were going to give it whatever the hell I said, the words were already half out of your lips anyway, already thought-out, already half-spoken.

"Go ahead."

"There are three reasons you should stop doing drugs – reason one is the obvious, it's crappy for your health and also very, very high school which is no longer cool William Benedict,"

"This is the girl who used to smoke like a train talking -,"

"Actually I still do smoke like a train, do as I say not as I do," you gave me that glare again, that look that sent my heart plummeting down into my stomach because God knows what it means you were going to do.

"Reason number two," you declared, still glaring, like you knew that whatever you said I'd listen.

"Is that I used to know this guy right? Will Benedict. Wasn't really friends with him but looking back on it I should have been. Nice guy, excellent hair, freakishly and abnormally good at throwing a ball around and being tackled by other guys. And you know what? He was a much better person than I ever was and I think he's a hell of a lot smarter and a hell of a lot stronger than he's been so far."

I just looked at you. Your eyes were still that shade of blue that made me feel like I was falling into them. I remembered touching you, remembered kissing you and for a second I told myself that I was going to do it again, I was going to touch you again.

Then your pager went off and you looked away and made a face. "I've gotta go," you gasped, all of a sudden hassled and shaking and frantic like I'd never seen you before."

"Wait-wait," I grabbed your coat sleeve. "What's reason number three?"

You were already moving away from me, half walking, half running but you looked back over your shoulder and smiled.

"You're the first half-decent quarterback Denver's had playing for it since Peyton Manning half killed himself and I hate to say it but we really need you if we're going to do well next season.'

Then you were gone and I was empty and my father was calling my name.

"We're taking you home with us," he'd said and I tried desperately to find some tint of happiness in his voice, some shade of relief, of joy. There was none.

The hope that had filled my lungs like a balloon deflated, collapsed, imploded. The light inside me that you had switched on short-circuited and died and I was empty again, lifeless again.

And yet that one thought kept running around my head, kept knocking on my brain and flashing in front of my eyes.

_I could start over if I could find the strength to start at all._

_(And you know for you I'd bleed myself dry – for you I'd bleed myself dry)_

You did that Case, it was all you. You turned the lights on, if only for a little bit. And that's the second reason why I love you, why you're everything. You made me feel like maybe I wasn't broken quite yet, maybe the clock hadn't run out, maybe there were a few grains of sand left in the hourglass. Made me realise there was time left to fight for something if that's what I wanted, if I had something to fight for.

For the record I would have fought for you.

Will.

**So was it ok? Was it awful? Let me know?**


End file.
